For many in the traditional media business, attracting young readers and viewers is like searching for the Holy Grail, a quest that never quite succeeds as hoped. However, according to How Teens Use Media, a new “myth-debunking” study by the Nielsen company, teens really aren’t that different from other people in how they interact with mass media. 

“The fact is, teens are unique, but they are not as bizarre and outlying as some might presume. Sure, they are the digital natives, super-communicators and multi-taskers we hear so much about, but they are also the TV viewers, newspaper readers and radio listeners that some assume they are not. What we have found, across a variety of studies, is that teens embrace new media not at the cost of traditional media, but in supplement to it. Taken on whole, teens exhibit media habits that are more similar to the total population than not.”